Political Capital » Bloomberg Billionaires Indexhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital
Politics blog featuring the latest news and analysis from Washington and the US. Political editors provide insights & data about today’s politics.Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:48:32 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Polling on Koch Brothers: Weapon-Gradehttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-08/polling-koch-brothers-weapon-grade/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-08/polling-koch-brothers-weapon-grade/#commentsTue, 08 Jul 2014 15:23:56 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=135185So much for the billionaires no one has ever heard of. Geoff Garin, the Democratic pollster, had this to say in a revealing Politico piece about the method to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s madness about Charles and David Koch — mentioned 22 times in Reid appearances on the Senate floor: “The Koch brothers have […]

Geoff Garin, the Democratic pollster, had this to say in a revealing Politico piece about the method to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s madness about Charles and David Koch — mentioned 22 times in Reid appearances on the Senate floor:“The Koch brothers have become central enough that we ask about them in every poll, regardless of who we’re polling for,” Garin says. On average, nearly 60 percent of respondents recognize the names, he says, noting that their negatives “are in the high 30s and moving towards the 40s, depending on the state.”

Invoking the names of the fifth- and sixth-richest men in the world — the big money behind the Americans For Prosperity ads attacking Democrats in a barrage of midterm congressional campaign TV ads — also “helps to negate some of the impact of some of their negative advertisements,” Garin tells Politico. “Once people understand that the Koch brothers are behind these ads, people discount what they’re hearing in the ads.”

Other polling has suggested that perhaps people aren’t as familiar with the billionaire industrialists playing a pivotal role in the 2014 election.

“The brothers are not a familiar presence to many voters, making it hard to demonize them,” Wesley Lowery wrote at the Washington Post. “Moreover, as Democrats have embraced the new era of big-money donations and super PACs in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, they, too, are growing more reliant on ideological billionaires such as Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund executive who plans to target Republicans over climate change.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-08/polling-koch-brothers-weapon-grade/feed/0Koch Brothers vs. Ex-Im Bankhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-06-23/koch-brothers-vs-ex-im-bank/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-06-23/koch-brothers-vs-ex-im-bank/#commentsMon, 23 Jun 2014 18:06:02 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=134251Big business will be lining up to save the Export-Import Bank, right? Not all big business. Not the billionaires Charles and David Koch, whose Americans for Prosperity has been on the record for some time as opposed to the “corporate welfare” and “crony capitalism” of the U.S.-run bank that helps other countries buy American goods […]

U.S. Vice President Joseph “Joe” Biden speaks during the U.S. Export-Import Bank annual conference in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 2013.

Big business will be lining up to save the Export-Import Bank, right?

Not all big business.

Not the billionaires Charles and David Koch, whose Americans for Prosperity has been on the record for some time as opposed to the “corporate welfare” and “crony capitalism” of the U.S.-run bank that helps other countries buy American goods and stepped out today with a full-throated endorsement of House Majority Leader-elect Kevin McCarthy’s opposition to renewing the bank’s charter Sept. 30.

“The Export-Import Bank mostly benefits large, well-connected corporations at taxpayer expense, and nonpartisan investigators have found the Bank’s outdated accounting practices disguise the fact that it’s losing billions of taxpayer dollars, Tim Phillips, president of the super-PAC backed by the Koch brothers says. “It’s the wrong way for government to do business.”

McCarthy, the California Republican in line to become majority leader on July 31, said on “Fox News Sunday:” “One of the problems with government is it’s going to take hard earned money so others do things that the private sector can…That’s what Ex-Im Bank does.”

“Ex-Im Bank is one that government does not have to be involved in,” McCarthy said. “The private sector can do it.”

The soon-to-be seated House majority whip, Rep. Steve Scalise, is also no friend of the bank.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have more Koch fodder for his opening Senate remarks. Reid has been at odds with the Tea Party-aligned advocates of eliminating the bank for years. This isn’t the first time he’s had to fight to reauthorize it. Reid has been looking for ways lately to approve the bank’s new lease on life, even attempting to attach it to a jobs bill.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-06-23/koch-brothers-vs-ex-im-bank/feed/0Gates, Koch Help Fund Senate Committees, DSCC Buys a Homehttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-27/gates-koch-help-fund-senate-committees-dscc-buys-building/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-27/gates-koch-help-fund-senate-committees-dscc-buys-building/#commentsTue, 27 May 2014 19:10:40 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=131698Two of the world’s six richest people made large campaign contributions last month to the two partisan organizations overseeing political strategy in this year’s Senate elections. You’ll recognize the names. Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and the world’s richest person, sent $15,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, […]

Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. director, tosses a newspaper as he tours the exhibition floor prior to the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 3, 2014.

Two of the world’s six richest people made large campaign contributions last month to the two partisan organizations overseeing political strategy in this year’s Senate elections.

You’ll recognize the names.

Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and the world’s richest person, sent $15,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, sixth richest in the world, and a frequent target of attacks by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, sent $32,400 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

They were among marquee donors to the Senate campaign committees in April, when Democrats edged Republicans by $6.3 million to $6 million in receipts and ended the month with a cash-on-hand advantage of $25 million to $19.3 million, according to reports the DSCC and NRSC filed last week with the Senate public records office.

Democrats will try to use their financial edge to limit their losses in the November election, partly by shifting millions of dollars to affiliates in states to run get-out-the-vote efforts. Democrats are defending 21 Senate seats compared with 15 for Republicans, and most of the competitive races are in states where Democrats are the defending party.

Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners, who hosted Obama for a DSCC fundraiser earlier this month, and Chicago media company executive Fred Eychaner each gave $32,400 to the DSCC. Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, billionaire investment firm executive Paul Singer and reality television star Donald Trump each gave $32,400 to the NRSC.

Gates, Koch and other wealthy donors are limited to giving $32,400 per year to a national party committee. They can give unlimited amounts to super-political action committees and to nonprofit groups like Americans for Prosperity, which Koch founded along with his brother Charles.

The Senate campaign committees are permitted to receive unlimited amounts from senators’ campaign committees, and Democrats have traditionally availed themselves of this strategy more frequently than Republicans. Democratic Sens. Pat Leahy of Vermont and Tom Carper of Delaware each sent $150,000 to the DSCC last month, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota transferred $100,000 to the group.

The DSCC’s April expenditures included a $50,000 deposit to the First American Title Insurance Company as part of its purchase of a building adjacent to the DSCC headquarters, close to the Supreme Court building northeast of the Capitol. The DSCC has rented part of the building, the Mott House, for the past 11 years, using the space for some office staff.

The DSCC is buying the Mott House using a $5.1 million loan, with the DSCC-owned headquarters and the new property as collateral. The mortgage on the Mott House will appear as a debt on the DSCC’s May campaign-finance report, which will be filed on or about June 20.

“We’ve been renting this property for years and we’re pleased to have the opportunity to own it outright,” DSCC executive director Guy Cecil said in a statement. “The purchase makes good, long term financial sense for the committee and does not require us to lay out any additional money before the election.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-27/gates-koch-help-fund-senate-committees-dscc-buys-building/feed/0Harry Reid’s ‘One-Party State’http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-08/harry-reids-one-party-state/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-08/harry-reids-one-party-state/#commentsThu, 08 May 2014 15:39:30 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=130320Sometimes stories simply clash. The collision of these two reverberates: — Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader from Nevada, says of the campaign contributions of the billionaire casino magnate and Republican mega-donor in Las Vegas in an interview with NBC News: “I know Sheldon Adelson. He’s not in this for money…. He’s in it […]

— Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader from Nevada, says of the campaign contributions of the billionaire casino magnate and Republican mega-donor in Las Vegas in an interview with NBC News: “I know Sheldon Adelson. He’s not in this for money…. He’s in it because he has certain ideological views.”

— The Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger reports of the far-reaching state-by-state and Washington-aimed lobbying campaign against online gaming that the chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the 11th richest person in the world and majority owner of the world’s largest casino company, is financing with campaign donations and a bipartisan army of advocates.

Adelson, with an estimated net worth of $36.7 billion, put up $100 million in the 2012 presidential elections, starting with Republican Newt Gingrich and closing with presidential nominee Mitt Romney. This year, Republicans ranging from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — potential contenders for the party’s 2016 nomination — have traveled to Las Vegas for audiences with Adelson.

The casino magnate does have one prevailing international political cause: The security of Israel. Yet the business of his casino palaces stands in direct competition with the prospect for a proliferation of online wagering.

Chuck Todd, the NBC News political director who interviewed Reid about the Kochs, Adelson and much more, was asked today how to compare Reid’s continuing public tirades against the Koch Brothers, who are even richer than Adelson, and the influence they’ve exerted in the political arena, with Reid’s suggestion that Adelson is in politics for the principle of the thing, not the money.

Todd, appearing on “Morning Joe,” said this confirms his view that Nevada really is a “one-party state.” That is “the party that plays on the strip,” he said — noting that Reid even tacitly endorsed the reelection of the Republican governor of Nevada in that interview, suggesting that the opposition hasn’t advanced any realistic candidates. So long as the casino industry is happy, Todd suggested, so is Reid.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-08/harry-reids-one-party-state/feed/0Wonder Bread: 99.5% Republicanhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-08/wonder-bread-99-5-republican/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-05-08/wonder-bread-99-5-republican/#commentsThu, 08 May 2014 13:25:19 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=130304The Koch Brothers run the most Republican-leaning enterprise in the country, right? Wrong, according to the analysis by The Upshot. It’s the maker of Wonder Bread that wins the loyalty contest in donations for the GOP, the New York Times’ Derek Willis writes at The Upshot. That’s Flowers Foods, a Georgia-based company that balances its production […]

The Koch Brothers run the most Republican-leaning enterprise in the country, right?

Wrong, according to the analysis by The Upshot.

It’s the maker of Wonder Bread that wins the loyalty contest in donations for the GOP, the New York Times’ Derek Willis writes at The Upshot. That’s Flowers Foods, a Georgia-based company that balances its production of that white Wonder with Nature’s Own baked goods.

Now, it’s tough to match the money of the world’s fifth and sixth richest men, Charles and David Koch. With a combined net worth of $103 billion, they have plowed tens of millions into Republican political causes. Yet, as The Uphsot notes, the political action committee of Koch Industries has given nearly as much money to Democrats in the past 14 months — which is in line with the typical corporate profile of political contributions, also known as covering all bases.

For party purity, the Kochs’ corporate conglomerate can’t match the giving of the Wonder people: 99.5 percent Republican.

Among the other highly loyal corporate supporters of the Republican Party are Timken — the Canton, Ohio-based manufacturer whose owners have backed Republican candidates and reaped the rewards. The Timkens backed President George W. Bush, and chairman William Robert Timken Jr. served as ambassador to Germany from 2005-2008.

ExxonMobil and Haliburton also make the top-10 GOP loyalty list at The Upshot, their donations more than 90 percent Republican.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has accused Republicans of being “addicted to Koch.”

Money from the billionaire Koch brothers, that is.

Today on the Senate floor, Reid continued his crusade to cast Republicans as puppets of the brothers via another pithy accusation, this one related to Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s fiscal 2015 blueprint for federal spending.

The Nevada Democrat called Ryan’s proposal “a blueprint for a modern Koch — How would we say this ? Kochtopia. Yes, that’s it.”

Then Reid spelled out his newly made-up insult, in case anyone was confused “K-O-C-H-T-O-P-I-A.”

“We might as well call it the Koch budget because that’s what they’re doing, protecting the Koch brothers,” said Reid, calling the Ryan plan a path to prosperity for “the really rich” only and the Koch brothers “power-hungry tycoons.”

Charles and David Koch, the fifth- and sixth-richest men in the world, have a combined net worth of $100.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. And they back a political organization, Americans for Prosperity, investing millions in defeating Democratic candidates — its TV ads dominating the market early in the 2014 election season.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-04-01/kochtopia-reid-on-ryans-budget/feed/0‘Sheldon Primary’ Opens at Venetian – Host Rides Maybach to Dinnerhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-28/adelson-primary-opens-at-venetian-host-rides-maybach-to-dinner/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-28/adelson-primary-opens-at-venetian-host-rides-maybach-to-dinner/#commentsFri, 28 Mar 2014 15:28:16 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=126173Remember the Republican National Convention? Fuggedabout it. The real screening of potential Republican Party candidates is taking place in Las Vegas, starting with a private “VIP” party in the private airplane hangar of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the 10th richest person in the world. That’s where Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, son of […]

The real screening of potential Republican Party candidates is taking place in Las Vegas, starting with a private “VIP” party in the private airplane hangar of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, the 10th richest person in the world.

That’s where Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, son of one president and brother of another, appeared as the featured speaker last night — at Adelson’s McCarran International Airport hangar, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.

The Washington Post’s Dan Balz calls the so-called “Sheldon Primary an event emblematic of how warped the system for financing presidential elections has become.”

Bush is in town for the weekend conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition at the Venetian hotel, one of the properties of Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest casino company.

Adelson, worth an estimated $36.5 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, put about $100 million of his own money into the Republican Party’s 2012 candidates, starting with his support for Newt Gingrich’s bid for the presidential nomination and closing with his support for the party’s nominee, Mitt Romney.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will be there, fresh from his “clearance” of any involvement in the “Bridgegate” scandal back home. Lawyers hired by the governor’s office this week cleared Christie of any prior knowledge of the lane-closings at the George Washington Bridge last fall that clogged the traffic of a town whose mayor hadn’t supported the governor’s reelection. His deputy chief of staff ordered “some traffic problems” in Fort Lee, N.J. A federal probe of the matter continues, however.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich will be there, too.

Vice President Dick Cheney is the keynote speaker at the RJC’s spring leadership conference in Vegas, which will allow Adelson a chance to start thinking about where he wants to place his bets in 2016.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-28/adelson-primary-opens-at-venetian-host-rides-maybach-to-dinner/feed/0Koch Brothers Anonymous to Mosthttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-25/koch-brothers-anonymous-to-most/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-25/koch-brothers-anonymous-to-most/#commentsTue, 25 Mar 2014 14:33:51 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=125527Most Americans say they never have heard of the fifth and sixth richest men in the world, brothers David and Charles Koch, worth a combined $100 billion. Yet their political operation has aired more TV ads early in the 2014 congressional midterm election campaign than any other group. Among those who have heard of the […]

Most Americans say they never have heard of the fifth and sixth richest men in the world, brothers David and Charles Koch, worth a combined $100 billion.

Yet their political operation has aired more TV ads early in the 2014 congressional midterm election campaign than any other group.

Among those who have heard of the billionaire brothers, the driving force behind an Americans for Prosperity campaign playing a growing role in national political campaigns, 25 percent hold an unfavorable view, according to George Washington University’s Battleground Poll. Just 12 percent voiced a favorable opinion.

The March 16-20 survey found a harsher view of Wall Street among those voicing an opinion: 39 percent negative, 29 percent favorable.

Approval for the job President Barack Obama is doing runs at 44 percent in the survey, disapproval at 55 percent.

The generic congressional question — asking which party’s candidate they’re likely to support this year — is a draw: 43-43 percent Republican and Democratic. The poll has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

The Koch brothers, ranked close behind Warren Buffett and Bill Gates (the third- and first-richest in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index), may not have reached the radar of many Americans.

But the group funded by the Texas industrialists has been flooding the midterm airwaves, running ads in eight states holding Senate races this year, as Bloomberg’s Greg Giroux reports of Kantar Media’s CMAG data. They are targeting Democrats as part of a concerted campaign to turn control of the Senate over to the Republican Party. The group has run more TV ads, 17,808, than any other group at this early stage of the 2014 midterm elections.

“With the 2014 elections just over six months away, the midterms remain very tightly matched. In this most recent Battleground poll, Democrats have closed January’s 2‐point deficit on the generic congressional ballot, and are now running neck and neck with Republican candidates nationally (43% Republican, 43% Democrat, 14% undecided). This dynamic, among other factors, substantiates the argument that the Democrats are competitively positioned for 2014, despite the gloomy conventional wisdom about the Party’s chances.”

“Just as we were conducting our final interviews of this latest edition of The George Washington University Battleground last Thursday, President Barack Obama was delivering a speech to a group of Democratic donors down in Miami. As we began to comb over the detailed crosstabs Friday morning, the data seemed to match up with the headlines from President Obama’s speech the night before, quoting the President as saying that Democrats tend to “get clobbered” in midterm elections. Certainly there was a lot in the data that would confirm that that may well be the case in the 2014 Midterm elections.

“Vote intensity of self-identified Republican voters is back up to a seven-point lead over Democratic voters (the lead is 11-points with behavioral Republican voters), by a 64% to 28% margin voters say the direction of the country is off on the wrong track (“strongly” off on the wrong track now runs over 4 to 1 negative), both the President’s image and job approval continue to be upside down, his job approval continuing to run at a historically high 1.7 to 1 ratio on strongly disapprove to strongly approve, and the generic Congressional ballot running even.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-25/koch-brothers-anonymous-to-most/feed/0Bloomberg by the Numbers: 77%http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-21/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-77-3/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-21/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-77-3/#commentsFri, 21 Mar 2014 09:00:23 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=125073Americans for Prosperity has aired 77 percent of its 2014 congressional election ads in U.S. Senate races. The group, which advocates limited government and is funded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, is using television, social media and other public outreach efforts to link politically vulnerable Democrats to President Barack Obama’s health-care law. Americans […]

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Americans for Prosperity has aired 77 percent of its 2014 congressional election ads in U.S. Senate races.

The group, which advocates limited government and is funded by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, is using television, social media and other public outreach efforts to link politically vulnerable Democrats to President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

Americans for Prosperity has run ads in eight states holding Senate races this year, led by North Carolina. AFP ads attacking Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan have run 5,471 times as she labors to win a second term. AFP has run ads 2,723 times in Louisiana, where Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu is seeking a fourth term in a state that Obama lost by 17 percentage points in the 2012 election.

The Senate, which Democrats control by a 55-45 margin, will be more of a political battleground than the House, where the Republican majority looks secure, according to nonpartisan political analysts such as the Cook Political Report. Democrats are the defending party in 21 of the 36 Senate elections, including race in North Carolina, Louisiana and five other states that Obama didn’t win in 2012.

The other 23 percent of AFP’s ads oppose Democrats or promote Republicans in nine House districts.

While well-known for its on-the-ground political efforts, AFP has run far more TV ads, 17,808, than any other group early in the 2014 campaign, according to New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG. The data cover the period from Jan. 1, 2013 to March 17, 2014.

The Koch brothers are the fifth and sixth richest people in the world, their combined net worth an estimated $101 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-21/bloomberg-by-the-numbers-77-3/feed/0Obama’s ‘Hey’ a Model for Microsoft’s (Clinton’s) Mark Pennhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-04/obama-11/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-03-04/obama-11/#commentsTue, 04 Mar 2014 18:41:15 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=122957“Hey,” read the subject line on the e-mails from Team Obama. Casual lingo for a fundraising appeal? No, test-crafted research for communications guaranteed to engage a follower. “Most of the $690 million Obama raised online (for his 2012 re-election campaign) “came from fundraising e-mail, as Bloomberg Businessweek’s Josh Green has reported. “It quickly became clear that […]

Mark Penn at Saint Anselm College in this Jan. 5, 2008 file photo in Manchester, New Hampshire.

“Hey,” read the subject line on the e-mails from Team Obama.

Casual lingo for a fundraising appeal?

No, test-crafted research for communications guaranteed to engage a follower. “Most of the $690 million Obama raised online (for his 2012 re-election campaign) “came from fundraising e-mail, as Bloomberg Businessweek’s Josh Green has reported. “It quickly became clear that a casual tone was usually most effective. ”

“The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people,” Toby Fallsgraff, the campaign’s e-email director, explained. “`Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.”

Mark Penn, the seasoned political operative turned chief strategy officer for Microsoft Corp., knows something about market-testing. Ask Hillary Clinton. The last debts that the erstwhile candidate for the Democratic Party’s 2012 presidential nomination paid off went to Penn, her former chief strategist whom she had owed as much as $5.4 million at the end.

Sure, they lost that nomination to Barack Obama. Yet they drew some blood in the battle — Penn was the genius behind the “3 a.m.” TV ad that questioned whom Americans wanted woken up at the White House in the middle of the night in the midst of an international crisis. Then again, Clinton went on to serve Obama as secretary of state during his first term, so that 3 a.m. shift was covered on a couple of fronts.

At Microsoft, as director of advertising, Penn developed the “Don’t Get Scroogled” ad campaign, a classic political attack targeting Google Inc.’s dominance in the search-engine market. The former CEO of Burson-Marsteller also has developed softer fare, such as Microsoft’s first national Super Bowl ad this year.

“His focus on using data to quickly evaluate and evolve our campaigns has driven new insights and understanding,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a memo this week announcing Penn’s promotion from chief of marketing to chief strategy officer, as Bloomberg’s Dina Bass and others report today.

This is a pollster, and author of “Microtrends,” who lays claiming to discovering “soccer moms.”

Penn, who started at Microsoft in 2012 as a senior adviser to former CEO Steve Ballmer, had some advice for people at a wildly successful company attempting to maintain its footing in a fiercely competitive field: “Don’t trust your gut.” — as the New York Times’ Nick Wingfield reports.

In a speech to senior leaders of the company last year at a resort east of Seattle, Wingfield reports, Penn illustrated his lesson about the importance of data in decision-making with a nod toward those e-mails from the Obama re-election campaign that opened with “Hey.”

So the guy whose most famous personal political client lost to the president of the United States is taking charge of strategy at the perhaps most famous software maker in America started by a man who is now the richest person in the world, Bill Gates — personally worth $77.8 billion, by the count of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The relationship among Gates, Ballmer and Penn goes back to Harvard in the mid-1970s, the Times notes, though one wonders if Gates and company consulted with Clinton about any of this. Penn’s time with Clinton was turbulent, Green reminds us.

It’s a good bet that Penn will end up with more than $5.3 million from his newest client.